The Ubuntu Linux distribution is produced by a company called
Canonical, working together with the Debian Project.
Its goal is to make a free Linux distribution that
simply works and is localized for as many different
languages as possible. You can read the Ubuntu
Manifesto on the ubuntulinux.org Web site. The name
Ubuntu is an ancient African word that means “humanity
to others”.

This is the second release of Ubuntu, code-named
Hoary Hedgehog. The previous release was Ubuntu
4.10. The version numbers are based on the year
and month of the release; 5.04, therefore, was released in April 2005.

Ubuntu 5.04 provides cutting-edge Linux desktop
features and easy administration with Debian's APT
package management system. It also is available in a
live CD version that runs without installing on
the hard drive. Ubuntu is supported on x86, x86_64
and PowerPC architectures, and future plans call for
releases to support additional architectures.

Getting Ubuntu

The usual way to get Ubuntu is to download a CD
image either from the Ubuntu Web site or by using a
BitTorrent client. Alternatively, you can order official
Ubuntu CDs if you like; remarkably, they are free
of charge. The hardware detection in the live
CD is identical to the hardware detection in the
Ubuntu installer, so if the live CD works, you can
be confident that the installer will work as well.

A DVD image also is available for Bittorrent
download. The DVD is suitable for installing Ubuntu
on a computer without Internet access. It can be
used as a live CD or as an install CD.

Installation

Installation is a straightforward process. Ubuntu 5.04 has
a text-based installer, but it is easy to use and
has excellent hardware detection. In the simplest
case—installing to a blank hard disk—it
handles partitioning and formatting automatically.
Manual partitioning is possible as well, allowing
you to delete and create partitions and format them
as ext3, ext2, ReiserFS, JFS, XFS, FAT16 or FAT32 filesystems, all
with LVM or RAID support. By pressing Alt-F2, you can access a second
virtual terminal and use a root shell to set up your partitions by hand.

If the system has a connection to the Internet during the installation,
the Ubuntu installer automatically finds and installs the latest
package versions so your new Ubuntu system is fully up to date. And,
thanks to the Kubuntu Project, an install CD that includes KDE also is
available. Ubuntu 5.04 also offers support for network installs using Kickstart.

If you want to add additional desktop environments such as Xfce, after
the initial install you can enable the universe component (see below)
and install the necessary packages. In addition, you can choose the server install
option to get a minimal Ubuntu system and then manually install exactly
the packages you choose.

As is generally true of Debian-based systems, you
need to run the installer only once. Even major
releases can be updated using the standard package
management tools. However, keep the install CD handy to
use as a rescue disk.

If you have an NVIDIA or ATI graphics adapter and you want to use the
vendor's proprietary binary drivers, with Ubuntu you can easily install
the packages from the restricted package set. Furthermore, as updates to those
drivers are released, your system can install them automatically.

Cutting-Edge GNOME Desktop

Ubuntu Linux 5.04 is based on the GNOME 2.10 desktop environment. It
features the latest slick GNOME features from the GNOME developers as
well as a few new features added by the Ubuntu developers. It uses the
X.org X server.

Figure 1. The GNOME desktop with a CD-ROM, a server called
uma and a USB Flash drive all mounted. Music is playing.
An update is available (red icon, upper right).

The theme, desktop art and applets shown in Figure
1 are all out-of-the-box Ubuntu defaults. I had
the mouse pointer hovering over the red update icon in order
to read the tool tip saying that two new packages
are available; the screenshot tool does not capture
the mouse pointer.

Ubuntu is developed on a six-month cycle, as is the GNOME
desktop itself. Each Ubuntu release will include
the latest GNOME release. Canonical has promised
to provide security updates for each release for at
least 18 months.

Ubuntu has a clean desktop philosophy, so your desktop
initially is completely empty of icons and files.
The Ubuntu developers wrote some GNOME applets, however, that
allow all features of GNOME to be accessed from GNOME
panels. For example, the Trash Can applet gives access
to the Trash folder without needing to move any open
windows to get to the desktop. Of course, you are
free to put icons on your desktop if you prefer.

The GNOME menus are located on the top left of the default Ubuntu
desktop, and as of GNOME 2.10, the menus are Applications,
Places and System. The Applications menu
includes icons to launch applications, filed into
categories such as Games and Internet.
The Places menu includes icons to open a file
manager window for the user's home directory,
the user's Desktop and a place called Computer,
with all storage devices available on the computer.
The Places menu also includes any locations the user
has bookmarked from the file manager, as well as a few
icons for accessing network servers, searching for
files or viewing the most recently used documents
list. The System menu is used for setting GNOME
preferences, system administration, getting GNOME
help and closing a GNOME session. Overall, these three menus
are an excellent way to organize the system
menus; it's easy to remember where to look for things.

The GNOME 2.10 desktop in Ubuntu is an excellent choice for beginning
computer users. Thanks to the GNOME Volume Manager, GNOME does sensible
things when a user works with storage devices. For example, when the
user inserts a CD audio disk into a CD drive, the GNOME CD player
automatically runs.

When the user plugs in a USB Flash drive, it is recognized, mounted and a
file manager window opens that shows the mounted device. In addition, an
icon appears on the desktop with a name such as 256M Removable Media, and
an identical icon appears in the Places menu. Users coming from other
OSes should learn to use the Unmount Volume command before unplugging the
USB device, but as long as they don't unplug the device while it actually
is writing data, nothing bad happens if they simply unplug it. The system
simply removes the icon from the desktop and the Places menu.

Other removable devices are handled in similarly slick fashion. Plugging
in a device with photos, such as a digital camera, results in a pop-up
dialog offering to import the photos.

The GNOME file manager, by default, runs in a
spatial mode where each place you can visit with the
file manager opens in its own window, and the location
and size of each of these windows are remembered.
A browser window mode also is available, and a
check box in the file manager preferences—Always
open in browser windows—can be used to set the
browser window mode as the default.

I came to know ubuntu becouse I have tried very hard to lean to work with linux, It surprise me the easyness of the intallation of your program,.....But....as i tried to install SUSE along with it I runned into the same problem; "It is very easy to run windows and any linux program, but be aware, it not the same thing when it came to run linux with linuxes.
Sugestion: Add more simplicity to the intallation
"Are You using another linux software (provide a list of possibles)"
"Ubuntu will now make room for your (linux flavor) by adding the following partition and choise at boot time" or something like that, you know I am not a linux programer so I do not know how to screw it.

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